New York City has been in the midst of a real estate boom for the last several years. Even with the economy in recession and the lingering effects of 9/11, homeowners have seen their apartments double, even triple in value in as little as …

Cooperative buildings should be run like businesses, with prudent investing and organized budgeting practices in place. As many buildings that have been on the brink of financial disaster can tell you, if you ignore these aspects of runnin…

In this and in future columns, I will be examining decisions of interest to co-ops and condo boards and suggesting what valuable lessons can be learned from these legal decisions. Recently, there were several interesting court decisi…

A Brooklyn condominium board learned a painful lesson recently when a jury awarded $55,000 in punitive damages to a unit owner who lived with a leaking roof for 11 years. The verdict in the case Board of Managers of Sterling Condomi…

Many co-op and condo board members know the difficulty of working to resolve arguments between residents. In mixed-use buildings, the problems may be greater. With both commercial and residential unit owners or shareholders in a building, …

The entire real estate industry - from owners and developers to contractors and architects - has been focused on the issue of mold contamination during the past year. However, no segment of industry has been more watchful than cooperative …

If you take a look at a map of Brooklyn, you'll see that nestled between the Buttermilk Channel and Gowanus Bay, there's a funny kind of hook-shaped spur of land that protrudes off the mainland and encloses the Erie Basin. That's Red Hook,…

Moving on a budget? No sweat. Here are some money-saving tips: Understand the estimating process. If you're moving long distance, you can and should get a flat fee. Get it in writing, or it will never have happened. If you're movin…

On the surface, moving sounds like a no-brainer: Put stuff in boxes. Move boxes from A to B. Unpack boxes. What's the big deal? But as anyone who's ever moved can tell you, it's never that simple. In fact, it's often a nightmare that leave…

Every New Yorker knows the face of their mayor. But the faces they might not recognize are those of their city council members, a group that wields more power than most state legislatures. Fifty-one individuals make up the New York City Co…